


hope, change, polling statistics

by retweet_this



Category: FiveThirtyEight Journalism RPF, Pod Save America (RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, technically a crackship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 17:43:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13346253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/retweet_this/pseuds/retweet_this
Summary: “I’ve been thinking about it,” Dan says, in between bites of his sandwich, “and I can’t remember why I said yes to this.”





	hope, change, polling statistics

**Author's Note:**

  * For [herstrionics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/herstrionics/gifts), [LilyRosePotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyRosePotter/gifts).



> this is two inside jokes gone horribly ~~wrong~~ _right_

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Dan says, in between bites of his sandwich, “and I can’t remember why I said yes to this.”

“I can.” Lovett downs the rest of his Diet Coke and pokes him in the chest. “You took one look at Jon’s pleading face and you found yourself unable to say no.”

Dan rolls his eyes, trying not to smile. “Don’t sound so high and mighty about it,” he says. “You didn’t manage to say no either.”

“Hey, I never claimed to be the smartest one in the group,” Lovett huffs, and before Dan can counter by reminding him of the numerous times during the primaries when he did in fact claim to be the smartest one in the group (or at the very least, the room), their phones buzz simultaneously.

“Must be the new polling numbers,” Dan hums. He sets down his sandwich and swipes open his phone, and the smile he’d been suppressing comes out as a frown. “Oh.”

It’s a good thing Lovett finished his drink because he probably would’ve spat it out by now. “What the _fuck_?” he shouts. “How – how the _fuck_ is this possible?”

“It’s a preliminary poll,” Dan says, slowly, he’s got to be the voice of reason after all. “It’s not the end of the world that they’re bad right now.”

“Are you telling me that twenty-four percent _isn’t_ the end of the world?” Lovett lets out a scoff and shakes his head. “Un-fucking-believable. Gimme your phone.” He doesn’t wait for Dan to respond, just snatches it out of his hand and starts typing on it.

“Hey!” Dan lets out a noise of protest but, really, what good is that gonna do? He shakes his head and tries leaning over to see his screen. “What – what’re you doing?”

“I’m getting you in touch with Nate Silver so we can fix these numbers.”

Dan blinks, then blinks again. “Okay,” he says, after a moment, “there are a couple of things in that statement that I wanna discuss.”

Lovett doesn’t even look up from the phone. “Pick one and go with it.”

“Okay,” Dan says again, “uh, why aren’t _you_ calling him?”

“Alyssa’s forbidden me from contacting journalists after what happened last time, and there’s no way you’re gonna do what I did. You’ll be fine.” And before Dan can protest any further, Lovett leans forward and presses the phone against his ear for him.

Dan grabs it out of his hands and rolls his eyes. Classic Lovett, this is so typical of him. He shakes his head and listens to the rings until he hears a somewhat familiar “Hello?”

He clears his throat. “Hi, Nate, this is Dan Pfeiffer speaking.”

“Uh, hi, Dan,” Nate replies, sounding understandably confused. “I don’t mean to sound rude but I don’t remember giving you my phone number.”

“I just now got it from Lovett.”

“Do you know how he got it?”

“I’ll ask.” Dan turns his head, moving the receiver away from his mouth, and he smiles pleasantly at Lovett. “Hey, Nate wants to know how you have his number.”

Lovett waves his hand dismissively, “We’ll deal with that later, just stay on topic.” He leans in forward, ear next to Dan’s phone, and Dan bites the inside of his cheek for a moment before he can speak again.

“Sorry, Nate,” he says, “but Lovett wants to know something first before he can agree to talk to you about how he got your number.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Nate hums. “All right, what’s up?”

Dan gives Lovett a look, still trying not to laugh, but he manages to keep his voice level. “Lovett wants to know if you can somehow make our polling numbers _not_ at what they are now.”

There’s a beat of silence, then, “He knows that’s not how it works, right?”

Lovett snatches the phone again, “Well, Nate, it obviously won’t work unless you try!” and then he slams it down on the table and walks away. His Diet Coke can falls to the floor.

Dan picks that up first, then wipes his phone on his pants before pressing it against his ear again. “Sorry about that,” he sighs, “you know how he gets.”

“I have an idea,” Nate replies. He sounds a little like he’s laughing, letting out a slow sigh when he says, “It’s still early in the campaign, there’s still plenty of time to make a comeback from this.”

“It’s only the people in last place who say things like that,” Dan points out.

“That’s a good point.” He pauses for a moment. “Hey, if I do find some good numbers from a reliable source, I’ll let you know.”

“That’s very much appreciated, Nate,” Dan smiles. “Take care.”

“You too.”

They hang up. Dan throws away his sandwich wrapper with Lovett’s can. It’s gonna be a nightmare coming back from these numbers, but they can do it.

Probably.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _In all fairness, those are some good numbers,_ Nate texts him, sometime during his coffee break. Dan’s now made it a habit of not checking his phone during the thirty minutes it takes between getting up from his desk and going to that coffeeshop around the corner, and sitting down at his desk once he’s got his coffee.

He takes a short sip as he sends a reply. _Haven’t seen them yet._

 _Oh_ , Nate sends, and then almost immediately after, _I was gonna make a joke about quality over quantity but I’ll save that for after you’ve seen the results._

 _What,_ Dan starts to type, but he looks up to see Alyssa waving her phone in her hand, looking around the room. “Hey, guys, you’ve seen the new polling?”

From behind his computer, Lovett scoffs. “Oh, you mean the polling that shows we’re doing the best with gays and lesbians between eighteen and forty-five?”

Dan nearly drops his coffee in his lap. “ _What_?”

“I just emailed you,” Alyssa says. “It’s not the _only_ place we’re doing well, but, well…” she trails off in a shrug.

“I’m gonna put this in a speech,” Lovett announces. He starts typing again, the sound of his keys muffled slightly by distance and bad acoustics. “Jon’s speech. No, wait, Jim’s. No, you know what, I’m gonna do it in both. It’s funny. Something about quality over quantity.”

Dan shakes his head and grabs his phone. _Lovett just made the same joke as you. Can I make a joke about the gay pundit hivemind?_

 _We don’t have a hivemind_ , Nate replies. Then, _Okay, maybe we have a bit of a hivemind. But I made the joke first._

_I’ll make sure he attributes it to you._

It takes Dan a couple of moments to realize someone is calling out his name, and he looks up quickly. “What?”

“Who’re you talking to?” Lovett asks, in his usual accusatory tone when someone isn’t paying full attention to him.

Dan fights back a smile. He shrugs, “Just, you know, Nate Silver.” He lets a laugh slip out when Lovett narrows his brow and gives him a considering look. “Oh, come on, you’re the only gay pundit for me.”

“I better be,” Lovett huffs. “I worked too hard and too long to get where I am and I’m not about to let some other guy waltz in and take my spot.”

“Who’s waltzing where?” Tommy asks as he steps inside, a couple of papers folded under his arm. He’s got that ever-present, slightly doe-eyed look that he hasn’t managed to shake since the convention.

“No one’s waltzing anywhere,” Lovett assures him. He lets out a sigh and shakes his head. “Dan’s just flirting with Nate Silver over there instead of doing actual work.”

This time, Dan does spill some coffee in his lap, but he’s too flustered to realize it just then. “Hey – hey, I’m not _flirting_ ,” he quickly says.

“Hey, Dan, you can flirt with whomever you want and we as your friends will completely support you,” Tommy says, slight smirk playing on his lips, before it falls as he transitions into, “But right now, Jon needs to see you in his office, he wants to go over some talking points before the pool spray.”

 “Oh joy, real work,” Dan deadpans, and he dabs his pants with a napkin before standing and following Tommy out of the room. Of course, when Jon starts talking about how he wants to change the entire direction of the Chicago speech, he kind of wishes he were back a few minutes ago getting negged about flirting.

Okay, fine, he a _lot_ wishes. But that’s a campaign for you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan’s probably been lying on his hotel bed for a good half-hour, letting the background noise drift in from one ear and out the other, just soaking in his exhaustion, before he realizes what background noise he’s actually listening to.

He doesn’t even remember putting on – he checks his phone – WaPo’s _Presidential_ podcast before it drifted into several different others, all swirling around his brain and making his heart act up again when he starts thinking about their chances of winning.

The FiveThirtyEight pod comes on and he hears someone say something vaguely positive about their campaign and before he knows it, Dan’s on the phone with Nate.

“You do realize there’s a time difference between Chicago and New York, right?” Nate asks. “It’s shorter than LA and New York, but it’s still there.”

“You picked up,” Dan counters.

There’s a slight pause. “All right, you win this one, Dan.” There’s some slight shuffling, maybe Nate moving papers or settling down in bed. “What’s up?”

“I need some positive feedback from someone whose opinion I trust.”

“Well, you came to the right place,” Nate hums. “There are few people’s opinions who I trust more than my own.”

“That line sounds like you stole it right out of Lovett’s mouth,” Dan pauses. “I already mentioned my gay hivemind theory, right?”

“You’re very funny, Dan.” They both laugh a little, then Nate clears his throat and gets into it. “That was a good rally today. Well, fine, Obama is always very charismatic, but Lovett’s been doing a great job of writing both Favreau’s and Acosta’s speeches.”

“It’s his only job,” Dan says. “We tried to get him to hire a partner, even someone he’s already worked with, but he took it as a personal affront and nearly stopped writing altogether. We finally managed to get him interns, at the very least, but even then he sometimes ignores them.”

“This all seems to track with what I know of Lovett.” He chuckles, slightly, trailing off in a sigh. “Speaking as a friend and not a pundit, I’m glad you guys made it this far. As a pundit, I have to say I’m pretty shocked you made it this far. Not sure if you listen to our podcast, but all the way until the convention, all of us here were pretty sure you were gonna lose. I think Harry was still holding out for a surprise Joe Biden victory.”

“Honestly, we were also expecting a surprise Joe Biden victory here,” Dan says with a slight laugh. “I don’t think it sunk into Jon’s head that he was going to be the Democratic nominee until he stood up on that stage with Emily and accepted the nomination.”

“I remember that,” Nate says. “Hey, didn’t one of the dogs start attacking all the balloons onstage?”

“Lovett says it was Leo, everyone else knows it was Pundit.”

Nate laughs again and Dan opens his mouth to vent out a little further, but there’s some light commotion on the other end and then he hears, “Ah, crap. Sorry to cut this short, Dan, but I gotta go.”

“Yeah, no, I get it,” Dan nods. “Thanks for uh, listening to me complain.”

“I like complaining with intelligent people,” Nate replies, and Dan scoffs. “What makes you think I’m intelligent?”

“Dan, you were a senior advisor to President Barack Obama. What makes you think you _aren’t_ intelligent?”

Dan pauses a second to think about it. “Self-esteem issues?”

He’s still chuckling about it, moments later, long after he’s hung up and Lovett’s bursting through his door to talk to him about ordering a bunch of pizzas for everyone because “we’ve all worked so hard and everyone who would sign off on this is asleep and also they’d all say no but you like pizza, right?”

Dan’s torn between wishing he were already asleep so he wouldn’t risk Alyssa’s wrath when she finds out about this, and just going with it and ordering pizza with Lovett.

Obviously, he goes with the latter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _How is it, being on the campaign of the sexist ticket in history?_ Nate texts.

Dan reads it once, twice, three times until he realizes he’s retaining none of the information and he just calls him. “We just got back from Illinois, I’m so jetlagged I can’t make it up the stairs, I can’t read, what did your text say?”

“Well,” Nate says, after a moment, “I’m guessing based on context clues that you didn’t read that NY Post article, huh?”

“No,” Dan says, slowly. “What Post article?”

“I just skimmed through it myself,” Nate admits, “but according to Twitter, a couple of, shall I say, prominent journalists said that this is the first ticket in a long time with an attractive presidential and vice-presidential candidate, and that was the main reason they’re gonna vote for you.”

It takes Dan a few moments to process the news. “Well,” he says, once he finds his voice, “I guess this is one of those moments where we’re switching from quality to quantity, huh?”

“I guess so,” Nate says, slight color to his tone.

Dan leans back in his couch and smiles, just a little. “Did they say which journalists?”

“Wouldn’t you want to read it yourself and find out?” Nate asks, laughing when Dan gives a halfhearted scoff. “I will say that the word ‘threesome’ was thrown around more than once and, on one occasion, ‘foursome’.”

“Oh, fuck,” Dan says. He stares up at the ceiling and lets out a long sigh that ends in a short laugh. “Oh, fuck,” he says again. “I mean, I think Jim will take it in stride, secret boyfriend or not, but Jon is gonna hide under the covers and not look anyone in the eye for the rest of the campaign.”

Nate’s laughter abruptly cuts off. “Wait, Acosta has a secret boyfriend?”

Dan slaps his forehead and lets out a long groan. “Aw, fuck,” he sighs. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Nate laughs, quite a bit at Dan’s anguish, before he says, “Don’t worry about it, I’m not gonna publish it or anything.”

“Oh, good,” Dan sighs in relief. “Yeah, I forgot you’re not a real journalist.” It takes him a second to realize what he’s just said and he slaps his forehead again. “Oh, fuck.”

“Wow, Dan,” Nate deadpans, “tell me how you really feel.”

“Nate, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it –”

“No, no, it’s okay,” and Dan hears him laughing again, “No, I get what you meant.”

Dan still feels pretty bad about it, of course Nate is a real journalist, but he leans into the joke a little and tests out the waters. “I don’t have to start saying this is off the record, now do I?”

“No, but then again, it wouldn’t hurt to start saying that,” Nate says. “Especially if you’re talking to some ‘real’ journalist behind my back.”

“Now what journalist would listen to me ramble on like this all night long, huh?” he laughs when he hears Nate chuckle, but the smile slips from his face a little when he hears another call coming in. “Hey, uh, I’m getting another call.”

“All right,” Nate says. “Go back to managing your campaign.”

“You go back to your real journalistic work,” Dan hangs up, still smiling, and he’s barely answered the second call when he hears Lovett’s voice in urgent tones.

“Don’t tell Alyssa,” he demands, without preamble.

Dan pauses a moment. “Don’t tell Alyssa what?”

“Tommy, Jim, Elijah, and I, well… we’re in Philly now.”

Dan hangs up and calls Alyssa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan holds his phone in his hand the whole time they’re waiting to board the plane. It’s just him and Tommy, going ahead to meet the New York campaign team and help set things up for the debate, but there’s gonna be downtime. And they’re gonna be in New York City. And Dan has a friend there.

A friend who, as of right now, doesn’t know he’s gonna be in his city.

He feels Tommy’s eyes on him, watching him unlock his phone and then shut it off and then unlock it again, long before Tommy clears his throat and says, “You know, it is gonna be pretty boring sitting alone in your hotel room when you have some free time.”

Dan shrugs. “I don’t know, I could always take a long nap.”

Tommy rolls his eyes and steps in front of him. He crosses his arms and, fuck, he’s really channeling Jon now, isn’t he? “Let me play Lovett for a second.”

“I really don’t think we need another person to act like Lovett – he takes a lot of pride in his individuality.”

“Fair point,” Tommy concedes. He shakes his head. “All right, then let me continue to be your good friend and tell you that you should just suck it up and tell him you wanna hang out.”

“I will,” Dan says, in a voice that doesn’t sound at all convincing. “I mean, I will when we’re all settled and done with what we need to do.”

“Dan,” Tommy says, tone serious as he gives him a look, “when’s the last time you spent time with someone not in the campaign, not talking about politics?”

Dan thinks about it for a couple of moments. The flight attendant at the front announces that boarding is about to begin, and he quickly sends a text, _Hey, do you want to grab drinks tonight?_

 _That’s a little sudden_ , Nate replies. _But sure. When and where?_

Dan waits until he’s seated, then quickly fires back a text. _I’ll figure it out when I get there. Just nowhere where they’re gonna be talking about politics._

 _Haha, sounds good._ Dan begins to smile, until he sees Tommy grinning over at him a few seats away, and then he pulls out his headphones and stares out the window. No way he’s gonna tell Tommy he had good advice.

Oh, fuck, which one of them is channeling Lovett now?

It’s a couple of hours later (more than a couple, really) that Dan finds himself at some random sports bar in the city, scanning the crowd for a gay guy in glasses. It’s not that hard, he slides into the seat beside him at the bar and smiles, “Hey.”

Nate smiles back. He’s already got a drink but it looks rather untouched. Still, he’s smiling, he doesn’t look pissed, and everything feels a little more settled around them. “Hey, Dan, nice to see you,” he greets. “In person, that is, and not as a talking head on CNN.”

“I’d say the same except you don’t go on CNN.” They laugh and Dan takes a moment to look around at the bar. “This doesn’t seem to be one of your usual haunts.”

“Well, your text didn’t specify what bar you wanted to go to, but I’m pretty sure they’re not going to put on any cable news here anytime soon,” Nate says. He’s still smiling a little.

Dan orders a drink and takes a sip, staring up at one of the TVs. “I know you work for ESPN,” he says, choosing his words carefully, he doesn’t want to say something wrong again, “but do you watch basketball?”

“Like you said,” Nate hums, “I work for ESPN.”

They talk a little back and forth, mostly about the chances of Golden State winning the playoffs, things like that, but it feels like there’s something missing between them. Finally, during another time out, Nate clears his throat.

“You know,” he starts, casually, looking down at his glass and then to Dan, “if we watched this at my place, we could spend the commercial breaks looking at prediction models and getting angry at some of the bad ones.” He shrugs and takes a short sip. “I know you said no politics, but it’s just something to think about.”

The corners of Dan’s mouth quirk and he shakes his head a little, slightly disbelieved and slightly, well, intrigued. “I don’t think I know many people who would make me a proposition like that, with sports and politics together.”

Nate smirks, just barely. “That’s not really a no, I’m hearing.”

Dan pauses, just a moment, then drains his glass and pulls out his wallet. “I’ll pay the tab, you call the cab.”

The date goes a lot better after that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> there’s a 90% chance there’s a sequel where we see them kiss


End file.
